Rand McNally GPS RVND 7725-LM
In the latest Good Sam Highways magazine, May-July 2013 a new GPS is reviewed. It is produced by Rand McNally for Camper World. I was wondering if anyone has one and their comments on it.
Forum Discussion
A lot of good comments on the Rand Mc RVND 7725-LM. We are seasoned RV's and I have been using GPS devices for field work years before the current travel units became available about a decade ago. I also used Geographic Information Systems so I am very familiar with how this stuff is programmed and how it works. We have had several travel-GPS units (Garmin & Tom Tom also two NavTech installed as factory units in our cars) over the years.
We did a fair amount of reading and then decided to take a chance on the Rand Mc RVND 7725-LM for our Class A. We picked up on at Camper's World near Akron, OH when we passed near while on a trip to Maine (from Ohio)two weeks ago.
Since I did not want to take the time to read the manual (it is on-line anyway) before trying make our first hook-up for the night I just plugged it in and let it run alongside our Tom Tom 1535 Via. Both units gave the same info for the rest of the day on our trip to our stop. OK - so far.
But over the next two weeks traveling to and from Maine we used the GPS daily. The large screen is easy to see and as claimed is relatively free or glare and wash out. But we also experienced some rather less than stellar service by the RVND 7725-LM. In general it gave acceptable guidance but certainly NOT impressive given its price and we uncovered what seemed to be some FLAWS in its logic too.
The main flaw was the RVND 7725-LM's apparent "inflexibility" on routing. Leaving a small town in western Maine (Bethel) on our trip back to southwest Ohio I programmed in the address our first stop on the eastern edge of Pennsylvania (Matamoras, just off I-84)-- it was obvious to me just glancing at the paper maps that the SIMPLEST route was to get over to I-91 S and take it south to Hartford, CT and then take I-84 W right to our stop.
But, regardless, the route option I gave it (i.e., shortest or fastest)the RVND 7725-LM insisted that we needed to get off I-91 at Springfield, MA and take I-90 W (a toll road) up to Albany, NY and then turn south meeting up with I-84 just before the PA boarder.
This made no sense (in fact this route by Map Quest is some 23 miles FURTHER) and obviously involved more intersections so we ignored the RVND 7725-LM for this leg and drove past Springfield to hook up with I-84 in Hartford. You would think that would be the end of it? Yes? But with the RVND 7725-LM, NO! It tried for for over two hours or about 100 miles to get us to turn at nearly every exit! I'm not making this up! Finally we stopped for diesel on I-84 and when we resumed the RVND 7725-LM made one more attempt to turn us around and then gave up and showed us the ONLY logical route -- the one we were on. This is more than annoying and also absurd GPS routing logic.
The RVND 7725-LM did the the same thing the very next day -- insisting on a route it picked for about 50 miles -- again the GPS had in fact picked a less favorable, and LONGER, route. When if finally gave up it showed that we were actually 66 miles from our destination instead of 123!! That is less than useless -- it is actually a hindrance in my opinion.
I intend to call Rand Mc about this and I they don't have a really good reason or can tell me where I made mistake in the use of the unit I think we'll try to dump this thing. The routing logic seems at this point at least to be juvenile at best --counter productive at worst.
The manual (on line pdf) is 59 pages long and I was impressed with its presentation -- there are indeed a lot of great features but do they work? In our first 1800 mile of use the RVND 7725-LM showed us a total 2 (count'em) Pilot truck stops, both in Ohio but in no other state. Pity because Pilot, Luv and Flying J are the places we prefer. None of the other two brands of truck stop showed up at all -- why? We had checked "all RV services" in the options. It did show us all of the Walmarts and hundreds of restaurants -- as if we cared.
ALSO, I had "curve warning" turned on and it warned about even the most trivial of curves -- I don't mind the over cautious approach. But just when I started to rely on the warnings the RVND 7725-LM totally missed (like silence) several really sharp, serious curves -- ones that I really would liked to have known about driving 12 ton, 55 ft long vehicle. What sense does that make?
The RVND 7725-LM only has spotty knowledge of the speed limits along the two lane roadways -- it often insisted that I was speeding (I had speed warning set to on)for more then a mile outside of the town limits and long after the postedlimit was back to 55 mph. Not helpful and annoying too.
So at this point I say the RVND 7725-LM is better than no GPS. But if these problems we experienced are not the exception (or our own fault) then it is NOT worth the money. I will follow up after my talk with Rand Mc.
P.S. down home's comment above is a good one the RVND 7725-LM is often totally silent when pulling out of a lot or RV park!!! Not helpful either.
We did a fair amount of reading and then decided to take a chance on the Rand Mc RVND 7725-LM for our Class A. We picked up on at Camper's World near Akron, OH when we passed near while on a trip to Maine (from Ohio)two weeks ago.
Since I did not want to take the time to read the manual (it is on-line anyway) before trying make our first hook-up for the night I just plugged it in and let it run alongside our Tom Tom 1535 Via. Both units gave the same info for the rest of the day on our trip to our stop. OK - so far.
But over the next two weeks traveling to and from Maine we used the GPS daily. The large screen is easy to see and as claimed is relatively free or glare and wash out. But we also experienced some rather less than stellar service by the RVND 7725-LM. In general it gave acceptable guidance but certainly NOT impressive given its price and we uncovered what seemed to be some FLAWS in its logic too.
The main flaw was the RVND 7725-LM's apparent "inflexibility" on routing. Leaving a small town in western Maine (Bethel) on our trip back to southwest Ohio I programmed in the address our first stop on the eastern edge of Pennsylvania (Matamoras, just off I-84)-- it was obvious to me just glancing at the paper maps that the SIMPLEST route was to get over to I-91 S and take it south to Hartford, CT and then take I-84 W right to our stop.
But, regardless, the route option I gave it (i.e., shortest or fastest)the RVND 7725-LM insisted that we needed to get off I-91 at Springfield, MA and take I-90 W (a toll road) up to Albany, NY and then turn south meeting up with I-84 just before the PA boarder.
This made no sense (in fact this route by Map Quest is some 23 miles FURTHER) and obviously involved more intersections so we ignored the RVND 7725-LM for this leg and drove past Springfield to hook up with I-84 in Hartford. You would think that would be the end of it? Yes? But with the RVND 7725-LM, NO! It tried for for over two hours or about 100 miles to get us to turn at nearly every exit! I'm not making this up! Finally we stopped for diesel on I-84 and when we resumed the RVND 7725-LM made one more attempt to turn us around and then gave up and showed us the ONLY logical route -- the one we were on. This is more than annoying and also absurd GPS routing logic.
The RVND 7725-LM did the the same thing the very next day -- insisting on a route it picked for about 50 miles -- again the GPS had in fact picked a less favorable, and LONGER, route. When if finally gave up it showed that we were actually 66 miles from our destination instead of 123!! That is less than useless -- it is actually a hindrance in my opinion.
I intend to call Rand Mc about this and I they don't have a really good reason or can tell me where I made mistake in the use of the unit I think we'll try to dump this thing. The routing logic seems at this point at least to be juvenile at best --counter productive at worst.
The manual (on line pdf) is 59 pages long and I was impressed with its presentation -- there are indeed a lot of great features but do they work? In our first 1800 mile of use the RVND 7725-LM showed us a total 2 (count'em) Pilot truck stops, both in Ohio but in no other state. Pity because Pilot, Luv and Flying J are the places we prefer. None of the other two brands of truck stop showed up at all -- why? We had checked "all RV services" in the options. It did show us all of the Walmarts and hundreds of restaurants -- as if we cared.
ALSO, I had "curve warning" turned on and it warned about even the most trivial of curves -- I don't mind the over cautious approach. But just when I started to rely on the warnings the RVND 7725-LM totally missed (like silence) several really sharp, serious curves -- ones that I really would liked to have known about driving 12 ton, 55 ft long vehicle. What sense does that make?
The RVND 7725-LM only has spotty knowledge of the speed limits along the two lane roadways -- it often insisted that I was speeding (I had speed warning set to on)for more then a mile outside of the town limits and long after the postedlimit was back to 55 mph. Not helpful and annoying too.
So at this point I say the RVND 7725-LM is better than no GPS. But if these problems we experienced are not the exception (or our own fault) then it is NOT worth the money. I will follow up after my talk with Rand Mc.
P.S. down home's comment above is a good one the RVND 7725-LM is often totally silent when pulling out of a lot or RV park!!! Not helpful either.
